TV & Book, I take them seriously

When I was little, I watched TV religiously. If my mom had a logbook to note important plant to use for natural medicine, or line in Koran to chant, I did have my own logbook too for everything I watched on TV.

I was 10 years old.

I noted everything from movie title, the actors, and small things that a ten years old girl thought was important. (I always read that credit they showed after the movie ended. The soundtrack, the year they made the movie, trying to decipher roman numeric like MCMLXXXVIII[1] was always a favorite ‘game’ for an (not really) only child like me. (If you haven’t read my about me page, having wide age gap with your siblings, made you felt like having 3rd, 4th, and 5th parent rather than sibling)

Not just having a record about what movies I watched, I also learn language from TV. I have a bunch words collection, I wrote my own dictionary: English, French and Mandarin.

One first French word I learn is Sucre = sugar = gula (Indonesia).

About learning language from Tv, there’s one funny story. It was my first couple weeks in junior high school. English was a new subject for us. We didn’t get English lesson until junior high school. (Compare to Indonesian kid these days they got to learn English in Kindergarten). My teacher has been aware that my English is more advanced than other kids. So she asked me where I learn my English.

I answered: Television. And she laughed, and keep talking about it the day after.

I told her the truth. And she didn’t believe me. It’s one of many moment’s I realize I’m weird. You’re not supposed to learn anything from TV. You shouldn’t take TV seriously.

Around that age where I made logbook for everything I watched on TV, I also reading children’s book. Although I didn’t make logbook for books I read (I wrote stories instead- Imagine me, 10 years old girl, living in Banjarmasin, city you probably never heard-trust me even my Javacentric Indonesian friend asked me where is this place called Banjarmasin – who never went outside Banjarmasin, wrote a story about spending summer vacation in Detroit. I didn’t even know where Detroit is, I just read a place named Detroit from a book I read) I loved them as much as I love TV. I love stories. Fiction, I took them seriously.

20 years later. (Now you know my age) I still take them seriously. I never planned to.

(Instead of writing blog about random personal things, next time I’ll focusing my blog about TV, Movie, Book, and WRITING. I hope you still read them. Warning: Although I read all kind of books (trying to read everything on Time’s 100 list), I read Y.A. a lot and children’s book. Current TV show I follow: Ryan Murphy’s Glee & Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom.)

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6 thoughts on “TV & Book, I take them seriously”

I think this is a very interesting subject. As a writer, I’m much more influenced by movies (and comic books and old-time radio shows) than I am by books. I’m influenced by books, too, but not as much as the other forms.